Oil and gas association gets its “tax bill” 

By Lucas Herndon, 
Progress Now New Mexico

In June, ProgressNow New Mexico joined the Rio Grande Chapter Sierra Club to deliver (literally) a past-due tax notice to NMOGA, the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association. Progress Now Political Director Lucas Herndon and Rio Grande Chapter Director Camilla Feibelman walked in the oversize tax bill to NMOGA’s office and were lucky enough to encounter NMOGA Executive Director Ryan Flynn. Flynn has been pushing for more extraction and less regulation for his industry, going so far as to tell his members last year that he intended to make NMOGA “the most powerful group in the state.”

NMOGA’s extraction based members waste millions of dollars in methane every single year through venting and flaring the toxic greenhouse gas. Rather than implementing common-sense reforms that would help capture that lost methane to fund New Mexico’s schools, Big Oil keeps fighting against those reforms, wasting New Mexico’s natural resources and underfunding the state.

Feibelman and Herndon joined activists who delivered similar messages to industry groups in Colorado and Pennsylvania. States across the country are dealing with the pollution and lost revenue caused by methane emissions, but none more so than New Mexico.

The fight for common-sense methane safeguards continues at every level of government, but it feels good knowing that Flynn and NMOGA are on notice from the hard-working families of New Mexico to at least pay their fair share when it comes to the natural resources they extract and profit from.

View video of the delivery on the ProgressNow Facebook page.